STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Four-year-old Blake has awakened several times recently crying about being chased by a bear.

Meg, age 6, began having nightmares three months ago. She would cry out in the night and come to her parents’ bedroom. “I’m scared,” she told her parents. They figured out she was having nightmares, but they didn’t know why.

When they talked with Meg during the day after a nightmare, she said she couldn’t remember what scared her.

Ten-year-old George had regular nightmares about being attacked by snakes. He had a dread of snakes and these nightmares with snakes were particularly unsettling for him — and the rest of the family since he would wake up yelling.

Defined as dreams with strong emotions which awaken the dreamer, nightmares have been extensively studied by Michael Schredl, a German sleep-disorder expert, and other scientists.

Schredl points out nightmares occur most often in children ages 5 to 10, and while all children have nightmares sometimes, only about 2 to 3 percent of kids have nightmares frequently.

NIGHTMARES VS. NIGHT TERRORS

You should be aware that there is a difference between night terrors and nightmares.

Night terrors are less frequent, but they are episodes of intense crying and fear during sleep, and children typically do not awaken.

Nightmares awaken the children, although they can’t always remember their bad dreams. Nightmares occur during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep which alternates in cycles with non-REM sleep throughout the night.

It is during non-REM sleep that we feel most rested. REM sleep takes place in the middle of the night or early morning and that’s when nightmares most often happen.

While it’s suspected that children begin having nightmares as early as infancy or toddlerhood, because they often don’t have the language capability they can’t describe the dream or nightmare that has awakened them.

STRESSED EMOTIONALLY

The causes of nightmares continue to be under investigation, but it is thought that children experience nightmares because of the level of their physical and emotional development, the emotional conflicts they’re experiencing, and the daytime events a child finds threatening or stressful.

For example, 2-year-olds are entering a phase of life when fears and anxieties are more common and, therefore, this part of their development leads to frequent nightmares.

Similarly, 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds are dealing with new and different issues in their lives — for instance, they are separated more from their parents, may begin attending day care or a preschool, and have new expectations and rules.

Although normal for their age, these issues often result in conflicts and nightmares.

And all children — from toddlers to adolescents — can experience threatening and stressful daytime events, which will be reflected in nightmares interrupting their sleep.

For example, peer problems, changing schools, difficulties in academics, their parents’ divorce or ongoing marital conflict in the home can cause nightmares.

AN AGELESS SOLUTION

However, whether your child is 4, 6 or 10 years of age, similar approaches can be used to help them cope with nightmares. One successful way of helping children deal with nightmares is to teach them to reprogram their bad dreams.

That is, after children awaken from a bad dream, you can ask them to close their eyes and change the ending of the nightmare from a negative one to a positive one.

Researchers have found that after practicing this a few times children will experience more pleasant endings to their dreams.

In general, it is helpful to teach children of various ages that they have power over their dreams and they can change the outcome of their nightmares.

They can be taught to reprogram the ending of their dreams by constructing an alternative ending to any recurrent nightmares so that there is a positive and less-frightening ending.

And children can be taught to talk to themselves during a dream and remind themselves it is only a dream and nothing that is going on can harm them.

Finally, if your child’s nightmare is related to daytime stresses, then help your child to deal more comfortably with that stress by talking to him about it, allowing him to express his feelings about the distressing event in his life, and by helping him change the stress if that’s possible.

James Windell’s column, Coping With Kids, appears in the Advance’s Relationships section on Tuesdays.